Road-rail vehicles which are operable on both roadways and highways are known and used in the rail industry for ferrying railcars from one location to the next. Units capable of self-propulsion on both highways and railways which embody a source of power for movement and which are also configured to provide for the selective attachment, support and conveyance of various types of maintenance equipment so the one unit may be universally applicable for carrying out a wide variety of maintenance and construction operations are in great demand by the railroad industry. In addition, these road-rail vehicles are highly desirable when they are capable of coupling and moving railcars, or even locomotives, that are sidelined due to maintenance issues or for other reasons as they can decrease the demand for and utilization of locomotives and engineers that are generally already heavily utilized.
Multi-purpose vehicles that are capable of towing railcars and that rely upon the use of the rubber road tires to maintain contact with the rails to provide motive power tend to require frequent tire replacement due to extreme abrasion of a narrow portion of the tires because of slippage on the rails. In addition, vehicles configured for towing that are driven by the rubber road tires on the rails tend to regularly overheat the vehicle transmission resulting in costly premature replacement or major overhauls of the transmission units.
Road-rail units that can be quickly dispatched via roadways to a location that is proximate to a railway with a railcar or locomotive that must be relocated due to a maintenance issue can be far more cost effective than sending a locomotive. The utilization of a switching locomotive and one or more engineers to travel to the location of the railcar or locomotive that must be shuttled to a repair facility greatly exceeds the hourly cost of operation of a road-rail unit. The road-rail unit may also be capable of providing the repairs at the point of breakdown due to the availability of robust maintenance equipment carried upon the road-rail unit. Moreover, the cost of personnel to operate the road-rail unit is considerably less than the cost of personnel trained and certified to operate a switching locomotive and the hourly cost of operation of a road-rail unit will generally be far less than the hourly cost of operating a locomotive. Costs associated with retrieval, or a repair operation can mount quickly if the location of the railcar, locomotive or railway in need of repair is distant and requires considerable transit time.